


Beds -- Hospital and Otherwise (hospital beds Remix)

by IreneADonovan



Series: Remixes 2019 [2]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Disabled Character, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Dysfunctional Family, First Kiss, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Hospitalization, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Paralysis, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-05-31 09:51:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19423549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IreneADonovan/pseuds/IreneADonovan
Summary: Erik Lehnsher's parents are dead, killed in the same car accident that landed him in the hospital. Angry and adrift, he is nevertheless drawn to the boy in the bed beside him, who is dealing with losses of his own...





	Beds -- Hospital and Otherwise (hospital beds Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/gifts).
  * Inspired by [a choice of mine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/894696) by [afrocurl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl). 



> This is for the lovely afrocurl, whose work I've been a fan of since falling into this fandom a couple of years ago.
> 
> I was drawn to this particular story arc, and was happily writing, when a few days before deadline, I realized the story needed to go in a completely different direction that required junking almost everything and writing something much longer than I really had time to write. Rather than half-assing the whole thing, I decided to just do part one, which can stand on its own as complete. I will ultimately write parts two and three as well, where the boys find their way back to each other as adults, though...
> 
> This was actually inspired by the whole series, but AO3 isn't letting me post it as inspired by anything but an individual work, so here's a link to [the series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/55155).

Erik Lehnsherr sucked at letting himself be comforted. And that absolutely sucked rotten eggs right now.

Because his parents were dead, and everyone was being far, far too nice around him, expecting him to fall apart. But he couldn’t. He was numb. Empty. Alone. And he just wanted everyone to leave him be.

But of course they wouldn’t. He’d be stuck in the hospital for at least another day or two -- “observation” they called it, because of the head injury he’d suffered in the car crash that had killed his parents -- and it was their job to check on him, even in the middle of the night. Didn’t mean he had to like it, though.

Just like he didn’t have to like his roommate’s crying. The sounds had been going on for more than an hour, and it was driving him mad, though he grudgingly supposed it could be worse. It was slow, snuffling sobs, not out-and-out bawling. Still…

“Could you keep it down over there? I’m trying to sleep.”

No response. Just continued crying.

“I said keep it down.”

“Fuck you.” 

Erik was well and truly pissed off now. Growling under his breath, he swung his legs off the bed and got to his feet. His battered and immobilized knee protested mightily, but it held, and he limped the two steps to the curtain between the beds and pulled it back.

The boy in the other bed was maybe a couple of younger than Erik’s sixteen, with a mop of shaggy dark hair and pale, freckled skin. He glanced up at Erik but didn’t seem to really see him, his wide blue eyes glazed with grief and tears.

There was something compelling about those eyes, hypnotic, and Erik found he actually wanted to comfort the other boy. And he was worse at giving comfort than accepting it.

Shit.

“Should you be out of bed?” Despite his earlier words and tear-blotched face, the boy spoke warmly, with a distinctly English accent.

Erik shrugged. “Probably not.” He took a step closer. “Still, do you need anything?”

Tears welled again in the other boy’s eyes, and he dashed them away. “Nothing you can get me,” he said bitterly.

“Try me,” Erik challenged.

The other boy just shook his head sadly. “You can’t help. No one can.”

Erik understood problems that couldn’t be fixed. “Tell me,” he said, more gently than he would have thought himself capable of.

“Only if you sit.” The boy gestured at Erik’s bed, but Erik stepped forward instead. He perched on the edge of the other boy’s bed, near his knees.

“Is this okay? I’m not hurting you?”

A bitter laugh. “You can’t. That’s the problem.”

Erik frowned, not understanding.

The other boy reached down awkwardly -- it was then that Erik registered the heavy plastic of the brace wrapped around his torso -- and prodded at his upper thigh. “I can’t feel it, any of it.” He laughed, almost hysterical. “You asked if there was anything you could do for me, but unless you can invent a way to repair a severed spinal cord, you don’t have a damned thing I want.”

He jabbed at his leg again, as if sheer force of will could make him feel it. Unthinking, Erik caught his hand. ”Don’t.”

“Whyever not?”

“I don’t know,” Erik admitted. He loosened his grip, but the boy didn’t pull away or start hitting himself again.

Neither of them moved for a while, not quite touching, each alone with his thoughts. Finally the other boy said, “I think you can go back to your bed now.”

“You’ll be okay?” Erik asked, then wanted to kick himself.

“For a relative value of okay.” He squeezed Erik’s hand. “Thank you.”

“I hardly did anything.”

“You reminded me someone other than my sister might actually give a damn about me. That’s a lot, my friend.”

There was far more to that story, Erik sensed, but not for now. “Get some sleep,” he said gruffly as he rose.

“You, too. I’m Charles, by the way.”

“Erik.”

**~xXx~**

Charles’ family visited after breakfast, and Erik understood a little better Charles’ remarks of the night before.

He tried not to listen in, really he did, but it was just about impossible not to, even with the curtain between the beds drawn, which Charles’ stepfather made a point of doing.

His stepfather was a great bear of a man, with a cruel twist to his lips. His mother, pale and sallow, shrinking from her husband. Only his little sister, a blonde named Raven, seemed to have come out of love rather than duty. Erik could see her feet as she launched herself at her brother, sobbing his name.

He heard Charles' hiss of pain, then Charles was speaking to her, soft and low, meaningless reassurances that everything would be okay.

"Raven." Charles' stepfather spoke sharply. "Sit down."

"But--" Her voice was a soft alto.

"Now."

She retreated to one of the chairs along the wall, where Erik could see her. She was a pretty blonde, maybe eleven or twelve, her hair in pigtails, her brown eyes too wise for her age.

"Charles." His stepfather spoke sternly. "What's this about you pressing charges against Cain?"

"You're surprised?" Charles' voice was cool.

"Unfortunately, not really. It's exactly what I'd expect from an ungrateful wretch like you."

"Ungrateful?" The calm façade fell away, Charles' voice shaking with emotion. "Kurt, your son pushed me down a flight of stairs."

"It was an accident."

"It was no such thing. He's been beating me up for five years, not that you ever cared, and this time he went too far."

"I expect you'll come to your senses and do the right thing once you've had a few days to think." Erik could hear the veiled threat underlying the man's words.

"The right thing." Charles' voice dripped with scorn. "The right thing for you and Cain, that is." He drew in a breath, continued in a less-steady voice. "What about what's right for me? I'm fucking paralyzed, Kurt. I'll never walk again."

"Language, Charles." Charles' mother spoke for the first time.

Charles unleashed a torrent of Fucks, capped off with a Bloody Fucking Hell.

"Are you done?" Kurt asked.

"No," Charles snapped. "Get the fuck out. Now!"

"We'll be back." More threat than promise. Kurt swept out of the room, Charles' mother and Raven trailing behind, his mother's expression stony, tears streaming down Raven's cheeks.

After long minutes, Charles spoke softly, voice shaky. "Erik?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry you had to hear that."

"I'm sorry your family are such assholes."

"Raven isn't. Everyone else, yeah." He said nothing more, and after a minute, Erik heard a quiet sobbing that devolved into a louder, rawer grief.

Unsure what to do but knowing what had helped last night, Erik levered himself out of bed. He pushed back the curtain with a casual flick of his powers, summoned a chair the same way.

He sat at Charles' bedside and called on the spirit of his mother. She'd always known what to do at times like this.

He took Charles' hand in one of his own, set his other hand on Charles' shoulder, and let him cry. Then when the younger boy's tears began to slow, he threaded a hand into his hair and rested his head gently on his shoulder.

"Thank you," Charles said, voice hoarse and shaky.

"Any time," Erik said, and to his surprise, he meant it.

**~xXx~**

In the middle of the night, Erik woke to more sobs. He rose immediately and went to sit on the edge of Charles' bed, saying nothing, just letting him know he was there, knowing he'd speak eventually.

It took a while this time, but eventually Charles said, "I don't think I can do this, Erik."

"Do what," Erik asked, though he had a good idea.

"This. All of this. Not just the paralysis, though god knows that's enough, but dealing with my fucked-up family and everything they're thinking about it."

Erik found his hand, squeezed it. Charles eyes glistened in the soft light that seeped in from the hallway, and he clung to Erik's hand with surprising strength.

"Raven's hard enough -- she can't stop thinking about all the things we did together, things I won't be able to do now, but at least she loves me. My mother is just worried about what her society 'friends' will say and how modifying the house for a wheelchair will ruin her décor. My stepfather is thinking that I'm even more useless than I ever was, that I'll never be a real man now, just half of one, and not the part that matters."

Erik hoped that didn't mean what he thought.

"Kurt thinks that because my cock won't work--" Charles' voice broke.

"He's wrong," Erik said fiercely.

"Is he?" Charles asked bleakly. "I'm fifteen years old, and half my body is dead weight. Who's going to look at me and see me, really see me, not just a body that's broken?"

"I will," Erik said. "I do. You're beautiful, Charles. Don't let anybody tell you different." And then he shocked himself by bending down to kiss him.

It was brief, yet it was an eternity. Charles' lips were soft as they looked and tasted of the salt of his tears.

The kiss was pretty chaste, their lips just barely parting as they touched, yet it was heady, intoxicating.

His first kiss. Their first kiss. "Even if no one else ever sees you like I do now," he said, caught up in the moment, "know that I always will." He couldn't promise to stay with Charles -- there was talk of sending him to Germany to live with his father's sister -- but he could promise to always care.

Charles smiled shakily. "Thank you, my friend."


End file.
